Today on the Grave Talks, Ghosts in the Forest, a conversation with Jay Gridley.

Forests can be magical places to a child, sprawling, seemingly, never-ending enclosure of trees,

unlike any other sight, a world with colors, creatures, feelings.

For Jay Gridley, the forest was a place just like that, well, growing up.

However, his forest contained far more than just animals, leaves, trees, and rocks.

It was home to a group of friends, spirit friends, that he would

never forget. This is his story today on the Grave Talks. Well, it started from me back when I was

probably five or six years old. Growing up, I grew up out in the middle of the woods and

a finger lake sent here in upstate New York. And, um, it was one of those settings where, you know, I grew up in a trailer on the middle of the woods with my parents, my brother and my nearest neighbor was, you know, a good, you know, half mile to a mile away. And so there wasn't much for us to do. So I would spend a lot of time out in the woods playing, you know, kind of, you know, building forts and, uh, playing with the other kids around and kind of, you know, chasing animals and stuff like that. Well, uh, one day I was out, you know, playing with some of the neighbor kids and my brother came out to, to get me to come home for lunch. And when he came out, you know, he heard me laughing and talking it kind of caused him a ruckus and he asked what i was doing and i'm like oh we're playing tag and he's like well who i'm like what are me and my friends here and he kind of looked around and i looked around too and i saw everybody taking off feeling like they were scared and he's like well there's nobody here i'm like well it's those guys right there and he kind of gave me. And he's like, well, there's nobody here. I'm like,

well, it's those guys right there. And he kind of gave me the classic, you know, well, you know,

I really wouldn't talk about this. You know, this is something that, you know, if mom and dad found out, you know, they're going to send you away. You're going to think you're crazy. Yeah.

And so once, yeah, so once that kind of classic story.

So once I, you know, had that experience,

I kind of shut things down a little bit.

I didn't talk about it because it kind of scared me because I didn't want to be sent away.

So throughout childhood and like my elementary school days, you know, I went to school in very

small towns, you know, like branchport, New York, Pena, New York, which are all, you know, right there in the middle very small towns, you know, like branch court New York,

Peña, New York, which are all, you know, right there in middle of the finger lakes in upstate New York. You know, I would see things. You know, I would, I would see people come in the room that nobody else would see, you know, because they wouldn't react to them and they would kind of like look at me kind of weird and like, you know, walk back out again. I wouldn't think anything about anything about it i thought it was normal i would see UFOs uh i once saw a UFO crash into a hillside and when i tried

tell my teacher about it and have her you know look at it this is back when i was probably in the

second grade and um i would have her you know look out the window and i would point right to where

i was seeing you know you know there's smoke and the fire and stuff.

And she would say what she would say there was nothing there.

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